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Oscar autopsy
Positivity and gripes
One billboard over Hollywood, California
Jimmy Kimmel opened by calling for a night for positivity, so I will begin my coverage of the 90th Annual Academy Awards accordingly. (Not surprisingly, threats of controversy never materialized.)
Dept. of Happy Memories
Movie
Shape of Water ***
Gather ‘round, allegory fans, and behold this fish-out-of-water tale of man’s inhumanity to what he deems inhuman from director and co-writer Guillermo del Toro. The action is recalled as a sort of adult fairy tale, and concerns a woman (Sally Hawkins, mesmerizing) without a voice and the mysterious creature who captures her heart (among other things). On the one side, you have love, sexual indulgence, science, art, magic, racial harmony, fidelity, kindness, great movies, and lonely but decent gays (Richard Jenkins, transporting). On the other, you have hatred, repressed sexuality (corn flakes!), politics, commerce, religion, racism, betrayal, cruelty, crap television, and married but wretched straights (Michael Shannon, terrifying). It’s a testament to the storyteller’s skill that he manages to cram all that into his narrative with nary a lump and still keep his characters dancing with only one or two minor missteps. What’s it all about? Well, our heroine lives above a movie theater that happens to be showing <em>The Story of Ruth</em> — you know, the Biblical woman who famously declared, “Whither thou goest, there goest I.” And Del Toro’s religious rascality doesn’t stop there: Samson and Delilah help to drive the drama, as does a certain someone drawn from amid the bulrushes.
While accepting this year’s Best Supporting Actor award, Sam Rockwell remembered the day his dad showed up in the principal’s office “looking very sullen.” “‘We’ve gotta go,” he recalled Dad saying. “It’s grandma.” As he closed the car door behind him, the eight-year-old Rockwell asked, “What’s wrong with grandma?” “Nothing,” smiled Pop. “We’re going to the movies!”
Movie
Get Out ***
Cultural appropriation shifts from “problematic” to “horrific” in writer-director Jordan Peele’s sharp take on the scary world of stuff white people like — starting with the “total privacy” of isolated country estates, like the one black photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) visits with his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) on a meet-the-parents weekend. (On the drive up from the city, the car hits a deer, and when Washington goes to check the body, there’s a telling shot of his foot leaving the asphalt and stepping into wilderness.) The jigsaw-tight structure is that of conventional horror done right — mercifully light on jump scares (instead opting for a number of disturbing reveals via moving camera) and mostly smart about mechanics. (Why go walking through a dark house in the middle of the night? Because you’re trying to sneak a cigarette, away from your disapproving girlfriend and her even more disapproving family.) And layered atop that structure is a squirmingly funny portrayal of tortured race relations, even among people of ostensibly good will. It’s not subtle, but it <em>is</em> clever, and besides, this is a horror movie — one in which the black guy is determined not to die.
Other that being Disney pictures, what do Pinocchio, Moon Pilot, and Mary Poppins all have in common? Though the extraction wasn’t carried out with quite the same sense of drama as old man Rockwell brought, they represent at least three absent marks when Babe pulled little Scooter out of class for a day pass to see a movie.
Movie
Wrinkle in Time
Four reasons to take a child to see <em>A Wrinkle in Time</em>: 1. They display a keen interest in physics. 2. They’ve read the book. 3. They don’t frighten easily. 4. You hate them. More thought went into Disney’s United Colors of Benetton approach to casting than to hammering out a cohesive throughline in the ever-shifting narrative. “Visionary” director Ava DuVernay’s concept of getting inside a character’s mind translates into keeping the camera so close that Tarzan could pluck a nostril hair and swing across the screen. And while I’m generally a sucker for imaginative art direction, the Technicolor gargle of overflorid hues on display here barely sticks to the screen, let alone to the memory. Surely there must be something positive to say about the production, but thoughts of an <em>Attack of the 50-foot Oprah</em> sequel notwithstanding, calling this an incomprehensible mess would be a compliment. Add to this the frustration brought on by sound effects that drown out crucial dialog passages, and the only thing you’ll take away from the experience is a wrinkle in your ass.
Jane Fonda can only wish that her last few scripts were as well structured as her white Balmain gown. She looked beyond glamorous. When Fonda and Helen Mirren took to the stage to present the Best Actor award, both women far outclassed the evening’s chintzy production design. The set answered the burning question, “What would Logan’s Run look like if it had swallowed Superman’s Fortress of Solitude whole?” Fonda took one look and likened the decor to the orgasmatron in Barbarella.
Eva Marie Saint moved the crowd with remembrances of her husband of 65 years — and regular Oscar night companion — who died last last year. She also stirred memories of a stunning black skirt with red roses stitched across it designed for her character in North by Northwest by Edith Head. And you can call him “Al,” or you can call him “Hitch,” but Ms. Saint is the first person I’ve ever heard refer to Alfred Hitchcock as “Fred.”
Two gown references in a row?! Let’s make it three: Rita Moreno was the only presenter to strike a dramatic pose when she took to the stage. It helped that the svelte Ms. Moreno was wearing the same black-and-gold dress she wore in 1962 when accepting her best supporting actress award for West Side Story. How many of us can still fit into an outfit we wore almost 45 years ago?
I was curious where the show would place Jerry Lewis in this year’s necrology. Whaddya know: they gave Julius Kelp the final word!
Okay, enough with the making nice. On to the gripes:
Kimmel joked about Oscar’s lack of manhood, but if the Academy really had balls they’d let Dave Chappelle and Tiffany Haddish co-host next year’s giveaway.
I had but one horse in the 2018 Oscar derby. What with all the talk of female empowerment and equal rights surrounding this year’s ceremony, Faces Places appeared to be a shoo-in for best documentary. What better way for Academy voters to honor a Grande Dame of cinema, one of the architects of the French New Wave, than by bestowing their award upon Agnès Varda (and co-director JR). The golden doorstop instead went to the Netflix sports doc, Icarus.
Dept. of Equal Time
James Franco and Casey Affleck were sorta disinvited from Sunday’s ceremony based on reports of conduct unbecoming, while accused rapist Kobe Bryant and Gary Oldman (his first wife accused him of domestic abuse) both took home Oscar gold. Just saying. And while I’m on the subject of deservedness: Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jean Arthur never won an Oscar, but Kobe Bryant did. Blow out the pilot light.
If Vegas bookmakers had been setting odds on whether Donald Trump or Harvey Weinstein would be the first to feel the wrath of Kimmel, a wise gambler would have rightfully wagered their life savings on the billionaire game-show host. Sure enough, before the two-minute mark our host got off a crack that he felt certain would unleash a “tweet storm from the President’s toilet.” Trump has enough critics, and while I appreciate the sentiment, Hollywood had best tend to cleaning up its own shithole.
Kimmel was generally amusing, with many of the recipients playing along with his “shortest acceptance speech wins a Jet-Ski” schtick. His best line of the night came when referencing Barbra Streisand’s recent cloning of her dead dog: “In L.A., even our pets are remakes.”
The evening’s most gratifying moment came when — with 13 nominations to his credit — cinematographer Roger Deakins finally took home a golden statue with his name engraved on it for his work on Blade Runner 2049.
It almost became as fashionable to salaam fans as it did to slam Weinstein. When accepting his best original screenplay Oscar, Jordan Peele thanked everyone who bought a ticket to see Get Out. Kimmel went so far as interrupting a prearranged screening of A Wrinkle in Time being held in the adjacent TLC Chinese. What could have been an innovative moment on Oscar history fell flat due to faulty presentation. Like Scorsese’s entry to the Copa in Goodfellas, the brief trek from one location to the next should have been executed in one take and without commercial interruption. (That’s the difference between screen direction and blocking for the small screen, I guess.) Kimmel and a passel of stars barged into auditorium #6 (talk about shitholes) at around the 7 p.m. mark. Why didn’t they simply wait and start the movie after the surprise? Then again, what movie lover worth their popcorn salt attends a film on the one night of the year the Academy invites itself into their living room? Still, if I’m in mid-movie mode and all of a sudden the house lights go up and in comes Armie Hammer armed with a hot dog cannon, you can bet your life I’m going to be pissed.
Kimmel observed that the smell of recreational marijuana permeated the auditorium in which the Disney family film was being screened. And speaking of pot jokes, did you see the look on Steve Spielberg’s face when asked if he was carrying any herb? Can this guy roll with a joke or what?
They saved the biggest laugh of the night for the end. When Guillermo Del Toro took to the stage to accept the Best Picture Oscar, the director grabbed the envelope from Warren Beatty’s hand to make sure it had The Shape of Water printed across it and not La La Land.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Oscar autopsy
Positivity and gripes
Oscar autopsy
Positivity and gripes
One billboard over Hollywood, California
Jimmy Kimmel opened by calling for a night for positivity, so I will begin my coverage of the 90th Annual Academy Awards accordingly. (Not surprisingly, threats of controversy never materialized.)
Dept. of Happy Memories
Movie
Shape of Water ***
Gather ‘round, allegory fans, and behold this fish-out-of-water tale of man’s inhumanity to what he deems inhuman from director and co-writer Guillermo del Toro. The action is recalled as a sort of adult fairy tale, and concerns a woman (Sally Hawkins, mesmerizing) without a voice and the mysterious creature who captures her heart (among other things). On the one side, you have love, sexual indulgence, science, art, magic, racial harmony, fidelity, kindness, great movies, and lonely but decent gays (Richard Jenkins, transporting). On the other, you have hatred, repressed sexuality (corn flakes!), politics, commerce, religion, racism, betrayal, cruelty, crap television, and married but wretched straights (Michael Shannon, terrifying). It’s a testament to the storyteller’s skill that he manages to cram all that into his narrative with nary a lump and still keep his characters dancing with only one or two minor missteps. What’s it all about? Well, our heroine lives above a movie theater that happens to be showing <em>The Story of Ruth</em> — you know, the Biblical woman who famously declared, “Whither thou goest, there goest I.” And Del Toro’s religious rascality doesn’t stop there: Samson and Delilah help to drive the drama, as does a certain someone drawn from amid the bulrushes.
While accepting this year’s Best Supporting Actor award, Sam Rockwell remembered the day his dad showed up in the principal’s office “looking very sullen.” “‘We’ve gotta go,” he recalled Dad saying. “It’s grandma.” As he closed the car door behind him, the eight-year-old Rockwell asked, “What’s wrong with grandma?” “Nothing,” smiled Pop. “We’re going to the movies!”
Movie
Get Out ***
Cultural appropriation shifts from “problematic” to “horrific” in writer-director Jordan Peele’s sharp take on the scary world of stuff white people like — starting with the “total privacy” of isolated country estates, like the one black photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) visits with his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) on a meet-the-parents weekend. (On the drive up from the city, the car hits a deer, and when Washington goes to check the body, there’s a telling shot of his foot leaving the asphalt and stepping into wilderness.) The jigsaw-tight structure is that of conventional horror done right — mercifully light on jump scares (instead opting for a number of disturbing reveals via moving camera) and mostly smart about mechanics. (Why go walking through a dark house in the middle of the night? Because you’re trying to sneak a cigarette, away from your disapproving girlfriend and her even more disapproving family.) And layered atop that structure is a squirmingly funny portrayal of tortured race relations, even among people of ostensibly good will. It’s not subtle, but it <em>is</em> clever, and besides, this is a horror movie — one in which the black guy is determined not to die.
Other that being Disney pictures, what do Pinocchio, Moon Pilot, and Mary Poppins all have in common? Though the extraction wasn’t carried out with quite the same sense of drama as old man Rockwell brought, they represent at least three absent marks when Babe pulled little Scooter out of class for a day pass to see a movie.
Movie
Wrinkle in Time
Four reasons to take a child to see <em>A Wrinkle in Time</em>: 1. They display a keen interest in physics. 2. They’ve read the book. 3. They don’t frighten easily. 4. You hate them. More thought went into Disney’s United Colors of Benetton approach to casting than to hammering out a cohesive throughline in the ever-shifting narrative. “Visionary” director Ava DuVernay’s concept of getting inside a character’s mind translates into keeping the camera so close that Tarzan could pluck a nostril hair and swing across the screen. And while I’m generally a sucker for imaginative art direction, the Technicolor gargle of overflorid hues on display here barely sticks to the screen, let alone to the memory. Surely there must be something positive to say about the production, but thoughts of an <em>Attack of the 50-foot Oprah</em> sequel notwithstanding, calling this an incomprehensible mess would be a compliment. Add to this the frustration brought on by sound effects that drown out crucial dialog passages, and the only thing you’ll take away from the experience is a wrinkle in your ass.
Jane Fonda can only wish that her last few scripts were as well structured as her white Balmain gown. She looked beyond glamorous. When Fonda and Helen Mirren took to the stage to present the Best Actor award, both women far outclassed the evening’s chintzy production design. The set answered the burning question, “What would Logan’s Run look like if it had swallowed Superman’s Fortress of Solitude whole?” Fonda took one look and likened the decor to the orgasmatron in Barbarella.
Eva Marie Saint moved the crowd with remembrances of her husband of 65 years — and regular Oscar night companion — who died last last year. She also stirred memories of a stunning black skirt with red roses stitched across it designed for her character in North by Northwest by Edith Head. And you can call him “Al,” or you can call him “Hitch,” but Ms. Saint is the first person I’ve ever heard refer to Alfred Hitchcock as “Fred.”
Two gown references in a row?! Let’s make it three: Rita Moreno was the only presenter to strike a dramatic pose when she took to the stage. It helped that the svelte Ms. Moreno was wearing the same black-and-gold dress she wore in 1962 when accepting her best supporting actress award for West Side Story. How many of us can still fit into an outfit we wore almost 45 years ago?
I was curious where the show would place Jerry Lewis in this year’s necrology. Whaddya know: they gave Julius Kelp the final word!
Okay, enough with the making nice. On to the gripes:
Kimmel joked about Oscar’s lack of manhood, but if the Academy really had balls they’d let Dave Chappelle and Tiffany Haddish co-host next year’s giveaway.
I had but one horse in the 2018 Oscar derby. What with all the talk of female empowerment and equal rights surrounding this year’s ceremony, Faces Places appeared to be a shoo-in for best documentary. What better way for Academy voters to honor a Grande Dame of cinema, one of the architects of the French New Wave, than by bestowing their award upon Agnès Varda (and co-director JR). The golden doorstop instead went to the Netflix sports doc, Icarus.
Dept. of Equal Time
James Franco and Casey Affleck were sorta disinvited from Sunday’s ceremony based on reports of conduct unbecoming, while accused rapist Kobe Bryant and Gary Oldman (his first wife accused him of domestic abuse) both took home Oscar gold. Just saying. And while I’m on the subject of deservedness: Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jean Arthur never won an Oscar, but Kobe Bryant did. Blow out the pilot light.
If Vegas bookmakers had been setting odds on whether Donald Trump or Harvey Weinstein would be the first to feel the wrath of Kimmel, a wise gambler would have rightfully wagered their life savings on the billionaire game-show host. Sure enough, before the two-minute mark our host got off a crack that he felt certain would unleash a “tweet storm from the President’s toilet.” Trump has enough critics, and while I appreciate the sentiment, Hollywood had best tend to cleaning up its own shithole.
Kimmel was generally amusing, with many of the recipients playing along with his “shortest acceptance speech wins a Jet-Ski” schtick. His best line of the night came when referencing Barbra Streisand’s recent cloning of her dead dog: “In L.A., even our pets are remakes.”
The evening’s most gratifying moment came when — with 13 nominations to his credit — cinematographer Roger Deakins finally took home a golden statue with his name engraved on it for his work on Blade Runner 2049.
It almost became as fashionable to salaam fans as it did to slam Weinstein. When accepting his best original screenplay Oscar, Jordan Peele thanked everyone who bought a ticket to see Get Out. Kimmel went so far as interrupting a prearranged screening of A Wrinkle in Time being held in the adjacent TLC Chinese. What could have been an innovative moment on Oscar history fell flat due to faulty presentation. Like Scorsese’s entry to the Copa in Goodfellas, the brief trek from one location to the next should have been executed in one take and without commercial interruption. (That’s the difference between screen direction and blocking for the small screen, I guess.) Kimmel and a passel of stars barged into auditorium #6 (talk about shitholes) at around the 7 p.m. mark. Why didn’t they simply wait and start the movie after the surprise? Then again, what movie lover worth their popcorn salt attends a film on the one night of the year the Academy invites itself into their living room? Still, if I’m in mid-movie mode and all of a sudden the house lights go up and in comes Armie Hammer armed with a hot dog cannon, you can bet your life I’m going to be pissed.
Kimmel observed that the smell of recreational marijuana permeated the auditorium in which the Disney family film was being screened. And speaking of pot jokes, did you see the look on Steve Spielberg’s face when asked if he was carrying any herb? Can this guy roll with a joke or what?
They saved the biggest laugh of the night for the end. When Guillermo Del Toro took to the stage to accept the Best Picture Oscar, the director grabbed the envelope from Warren Beatty’s hand to make sure it had The Shape of Water printed across it and not La La Land.
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